I’ve been studying imagination a lot lately.  

And I keep bringing it up because it’s so important to you doing your art.  And working the kind of schedule you wanna work and making the kind of money you wanna make.

I could speak tons about the topic and drown you with quotes and case studies.

But I won’t.

I’d rather show you one of my favorite lines from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  These two lines do an amazing job illustrating my point.

Harry:  “Tell me one last thing.  Is this real?  Or has this been happening inside my head?”  

Dumbledore:  Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on Earth should that mean that it is not real?”

When we’re kids, our imagination is off the charts.  

But the older we get the more we live our life believing only in our 5 senses.  The 5 senses are cool but…  I have a one year old Malinois that can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.

How do we use our five senses to get the good stuff?   

The big goals?  

We don’t.

We use our imagination.  We desire something and we live our lives from that end result.

Cool.  So what’s the problem?  

It works both ways.  

For years I never pursued being an artist.  My art self-esteem was about as high as nuts on a cricket.  My vision for my art was simple.  

I’m not good enough to make a living drawing.  And guess what?  

I never was.

But once I couldn’t stand working for the insurance company, my desire to be an artist went into over-drive.  

Soon not only did I believe I could make it as an artist but in my imagination there was only one question.  

Who would hire me first…  

Marvel or DC?

Robert Frost said, “You’re always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.”

When you believe in a thing a you want, your energy flows.  You get enthusiasm and feel satisfaction.  Even if your life isn’t what you want it to be.

Even if you work a job you can’t stand.  

But on the flip side if you use your imagine to focus on…

Where you AREN’T.

Or what you don’t have or…

What you’re NOT.

You may as well be selling vacuums door to door.

And for the record, there’s nothing wrong with selling vacuums.  I just bought one a month ago.  Many of us need them.  

They make the world a better place.

But YOU don’t have to sell them.  

Work on your art.  

And YOU make the world a better place that way.

Adam

My mother-in-law loves playing the lottery. 

Like…obsession level. 

Like how Harry Potter obsessed over Quidditch.  Or how Voldemort was obsessed with finding the Elder Wand. 

It’s like that….

Well, last week my mother-in-law got the Mega Ball for the Mega Millions lottery but no other numbers. Instead of being grateful for winning a few bucks, she whined and complained. 

I half jokingly told her she got the most important number.  Now all she had to do was  work on getting the other numbers. 

This comment was about as welcoming to her as the COVID 19 virus. 

Today she told me in her angst she mixed up her tickets and accidentally threw it away. So that few dollars she won was gone.

Poof!

This reminded me of a universal truth.

By not being grateful or by not using what you are given, you may end up with zero.

Hell, less than zero.

It reminded me of a story Jim Rohn used to talk about.  It was about the Law of Use and the parable of the talents from the Bible. 

If you’ve never heard of the parable of the talents it goes like this. 

A master had three servants and he gave them all talents.   A talent was a measure of gold by the way… 

He gave one servant 5.

One servant 2.

And one servant 1.

The master wanted to see what they would do with the talents so the master left town for a bit.  When he returned he found out:

The one who had 5 grew them to 10. 

The one who had 2 grew them to 4

The one who was given 1 hid it and did nothing with it.

The master was happy with the first two but lost his shit on the third guy.  

The master took his talent and gave it to the servant who had 10. 

So what is the moral of this story?

Whatever you don’t use, you lose.  But again, it can get even worse that that. 

What if you lose 20 pounds and then you stop working out and eating right. You may not only gain the weight back but you may even gain more than the original 20 back.   

And that happens to dieters every day…

What if you marry the perfect person and stop nurturing your relationship? 

At best maybe you’ll have a mediocre relationship or you may be even worse off before you met. 

My point is this.  Use your gifts.

Do your art. 

Obsess over it!

Make your light shine so bright everyone can see it.  And as Natalie Franke said in her book Gutsy, “no one ever changed the world by dimming their light.”

And when you use the gifts that you are given and stay to true to who you are, IT happens.  

And when you’re grateful for it, synchronicity knocks on your door like solar panel door-to-door salesmen!

And so do miracles.

Adam

I love horror moves.  

But you ever wonder why so many crappy ones get made?  

Let alone explain why some get massively popular…

Look at Friday the 13th.  A guy goes around in a hockey mask and kills people in a forrest.  For like, 40 years…  

Or Michale Myers and the Halloween movies…  

Or the Nightmare on Elm Street movies…

At least I’ll give those movies #1 of Al Ries and Jack Trout’s 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.  Part of their success is, The Law of Leadership:  It’s better to be first than it is better.  

But today I just saw a trailer for Slotherhouse.  It’s about a college student who adopts a pet sloth who eventually murder’s people in her sorority house.

So let me get this straight.  You want to make a murderer out of one of the cutest and slowest animals on Earth?  

That’d be like remaking the movie Seabiscuit with a burro with a bad leg as the star.  

I’ll admit, I’m shining you on a bit because I know exactly how movies like Snakes On A Plane get made.  

It’s because the creators of these films have a vision for what they want and they stuck to it until it was produced.  

It’s the same way skinny people get buff, fat people get slim, and it’s how skyscrapers get built.  Someone imagined it FIRST and then made it happen.

Is imagination important?  Of course it is!  

It’s everything!

Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Tesla said, “it takes imagination to create your path.”

Steve Harvey said, “It is the preview to life’s coming attractions.”

So if your life or biz ain’t looking the way you want it to, you first need to look at what you are filling your imagination with.  Are you filling it with… 

What you don’t have?

Bills?

The skills YOU THINK you need?  

All those things will keep you broke and far from the life you want.  

And by the way, vision and imagination are the same thing.  

If you want a new BMW and you don’t have one.  Your vision of you getting a new one is…where?  

Your imagination.  

It will reside there until it appears in your reality and becomes your truth.  

And as Neville Goddard says, “truth depends upon the intensity of imagination, not upon facts.”

So, um, let it in.

Adam

I love it when I ‘look for something new’ on Netflix and score a home run.

Me and wifey just finished watching The Night Agent and thoroughly enjoyed it.  

What it is about?  Glad you asked. The blurb on Goolge says:

“While monitoring an emergency line, an FBI agent answers a call that plunges him into a deadly conspiracy involving a mole at the White House.”

Corruption you say?

In politics?

No way?

A lesser part of the Night Agent is a reoccurring story about his deceased father.  His father was also in the FBI and died in the middle of a personal scandal.  

Like LukeSkywalker and plenty of others, The Night Agent, Peter Sutherland wanted to know the truth.  He wanted to know if his father was who he thought he was.

Whether you REALLY know someone is important but it’s nowhere near as important as knowing who YOU ARE.

I was listening to Natalie Franke’s podcast this morning.  She spoke about a low point in her life when she was depressed and sounded nothing like the chipper voice we hear in her podcast.  

She was strugglin.  

Stagnant.  

No va.  (Spanish, not a misspelling of an old Chevy.)

And when she didn’t move forward her husband rattled off some of her attributes and accomplishments and told her, don’t forget who you are.

I loved that so much I hit rewind and listened to it again.  

I resonated so much with this because I AM a teacher.  

It’s in my bones.  

My DNA.  

My soul.

As  much as I try to fight it sometimes, it always comes back around.  Whether I’m launching a new educational product or answering a question on social.

I used to fight it but now I greet it like an old friend.  

“Oh, you’re back…”

Knowing who you are makes doing what you do so much easier.  And you feel so more satisfaction and fulfillment from what you do.

Your decisions get easier and there’s a flow that you get into that you just can’t manufacture artificially.  

And if you’re not 100% sure of who you are, what do you do?  

Move forward.

Do stuff.

“You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.”  

Anne Lamott

Adam

I was at an event drawing a married couple.  The wife said her husband was an artist and I found out he liked comic books.

Normally when people say they like comics, what they really mean is they bought SOME comics in their youth.  They usually weren’t doing cartwheels over them for most of their childhood like I was.  

There’s nothing wrong with that of course.  

Just like some Los Angeles Lakers fans occasionally watch games on TV and some folks DVR every game and watch them wearing a Magic Johnson jersey.  All while drinking purple Kool-Aid.  Both are fans.

I gave the husband a list of my favorite artists and to my surprise he knew who they were.  He even mentioned new art by one of my favorite artists growing up, John Byne.  At this point we looked like two 10 year old boys comparing baseball cards.   

I even had to stop drawing a few times because I was so enthralled by our conversation…  

About halfway thru I looked over at his wife.  Usually when I start geeking out over Star Wars or comics or something, the significant other tunes out.  Wives (sometimes it’s husbands) usually want to listen to us talk about comics about as much they’d like to binge-watch C-SPAN.

I looked at her face and to my surprise she didn’t look annoyed. 

Awesome.  

I love comics and cartooning.  So much so I draw those things for a living.  I do have a passion that I don’t put on my resume though.

I’m a miner.  

But not like with crypto or working in a mine with an ax.

I’m constantly digging for ways to be successful.  And by success I don’t mean just making more money.  I want to know the ideas, habits, and beliefs you need to have to be successful at what you wanna do.  

And just like with my cartooning, where I take something complex like the human face and draw it with only a hand-full of lines, I want to simplify success too.  And I want to do it in a way that anyone can understand and apply it. All while ignoring the “Brules”.  

What are brules?  

Glad you asked.  Vishen Lakhiani created this term and he defines brules as “bullshit rules”.  Hence the name… What’s an example of a brule?   Hard work equals success.  Hard work helps but it’s not everything.  

And neither is saying affirmations.

Or writing down your goals everyday.

Hell, you don’t even have to be nice to people.

I have met (and read about) some really grumpy asshole millionaires in my time.  

So why do brules keep hanging around?  lt’s because almost all brules have some truth to them or they were true at one time.   Brules can help, I’m just saying that none of them are vital.  I used to think things like hard work was necessary but I know differently now.  

Dan Kennedy said something years ago about selling a monthly newsletter.  I don’t remember it verbatim but it went something like this.  He said people sign up for your newsletter to get the information but they stay signed up your newsletter because of who you are.  

And as I enjoyed Dan’s knowledge, insights, and his lovable grump personality, he was 100% right.   This also a conclusion I came to at the end of the writing challenge I just started in February.  

The conclusion I came to is…

Wait for it…

Is the suspense killing you…?

Here’s it is:  You get paid because of who you are.

Science now proves what the spiritual community has said, for as long as it’s been around.  

Ask and it is given. 

Period.

And if you’re asked and ain’t gettin’, you’re blocking it.  The problem is you’re likely doing it  emotionally or spiritually.  When you solve that problem, your life changes.

Look at it this way.  You could make $100,000 a year doing what you love,  like photographing dogs.  Or you could make $100,000 a year working for your power company.  

And if you first thought I’m wrong.  It would be hard to make that much money doing photography or making $100,000 working for the power company was easier, or more stable, or “acceptable”.  That’s a block.

Think of it like Newton’s first law of motion.  Every object will remain at rest or in motion unless the actions of an external force gets in the way.  Or in my words…blocks it.

Blocks come in about many forms as Baskin Robbins sells flavors of ice cream.  Your blocks could be…

Feeling unworthy.

Fear of success.

Family pressures. 

All sorts of stuff.  Keep in mind though, vision and blocks come from the same place.  

YOU.

So that means, YOU can fix it.  

Adam